


Howl at the Moon

by seashadows



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M, Shapeshifter Bilbo Baggins, Shapeshifting, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-14 23:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13018080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: The upper-class families of the Shire have a secret - one that Bilbo has inherited.It makes going on a quest a bit difficult, but he manages.





	Howl at the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThatOneChemistryNerd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneChemistryNerd/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy!

Nothing like a good snog under the moonlight to set Nori’s mood to rights. Even better when Dwalin was involved. That was a thrill in itself, kissing Guard Captain Dwalin, the one Dwarf who’d seemingly made it his life’s mission to get Nori in gaol and who right now was whimpering under Nori’s thrall. One point to Nori, none to Dwalin, just the way he liked it. “That’s right,” Nori told him, arms as far around Dwalin’s broad shoulders as he could get them and his back against the rough bark of an oak tree. He’d be so itchy in the morning from the scrapes. “That’s my Dwal. Now kiss me neck.” 

Dwalin moaned and obeyed. Nori closed his eyes and enjoyed it, save for an unasked-for bite that he responded to with a smack on Dwalin’s back to make him stop. “Sorry,” Dwalin grunted. 

“You’d better be sorry,” Nori said indignantly. “I won’t have bruises to explain to Dori in the morning, I’ve told you that. We can’t –“ 

That was when the shadow leaped over their heads, momentarily blocking out the moon. “Mahal!” Nori yelped, dimly aware as he ducked that Dwalin’s scream could shatter window glass. “ _Down!_ ” Knife, knife, where was his favorite knife? He dug his hands into his pockets and searched with frantic, grasping fingers. Every second that went by was a second that…whatever that thing was could get the jump on him. “Dwalin, eyes up!” 

But the shadow didn’t stay for an attack; it paused a few yards ahead of them and ran off baying into the night, springing forward on powerful back legs. One more wild howl among the trees and it was gone. Not even a rustle of plant life betrayed the fact that it had been there. 

Not that that did much for Nori’s pounding heart. “Wolf,” he panted as he sank down to the ground, his back scraping the tree trunk. “Shit.” 

Dwalin wavered where he stood, but years of guarding the royal family seemed to have given him the instincts he needed to stay on his feet, damn him. No wonder Nori couldn’t thieve anything useful when he was around. “That wasn’t a wolf,” he said. “Not unless I miss my guess. That was a bloody warg!” 

“Couldn’t be!” Nori protested, having recovered his breath. “Wasn’t nearly big enough to be one.” 

Dwalin turned around and crossed his arms. “And when’ve you had the opportunity to see a warg?” 

“I seen plenty of things you don’t know about.” 

It was hard to tell with the light shadowing Dwalin’s face into something forbidding, but Nori thought he was probably rolling his eyes. “No time for any of that now,” Dwalin said. He held out his hand, and when Nori took it, he jerked him to his feet. “Time’s wastin’. We’ve got to go tell Thorin and the others there’s something about. Wolf, warg, I don’t care and neither will he.” 

“Have we got to move on?” Nori asked, and inwardly cursed himself. If he and Dwalin hadn’t sneaked off for a bit of kissing, they might not have attracted the thing’s attention and it would probably be back in Sauron’s personal hell where it belonged. Then they could have crept back and gotten some sleep, like everyone else who didn’t have rotten luck. 

Dwalin shrugged. “Can’t say. Thorin’s got to assess the danger for himself. Like as not, we’ll have to stay up. The ponies can’t walk all night if they’ve gone all day.” 

That eased Nori’s mind a bit. It was true; pack animals inhibited their ability to go as hard and fast as Thorin probably wanted to. He snickered at the thought of ‘hard and fast,’ then looked around one more time and followed where Dwalin had begun to walk back to the Company’s camp. 

They moved near-silently under the cover of the trees. Years of practice among Goblins and the like had taught Nori how to stay quiet in last year’s half-rotted leaves, a useful skill if you didn’t want to get knifed in the gut over some lost piece of gold that everyone was convinced you’d stolen (and even if you had, they still wouldn’t get the jump on you). It left Nori ample time to ponder what on Arda was going on. Since when did lone wolves leap over you and then run off? The ones he’d seen who didn’t have a pack were usually up to as little good as people tended to think Nori was. 

The howl hadn’t sounded anguished or angry, either. It sounded…happy. The wolf, or warg or whatever it was, sounded as if it’d had a fine time running and jumping around the woods. Whatever was going on in its head, Nori just hoped it wouldn’t try to attack the Company. At any rate, if it tried to go for Ori, it was the wolf’s life he feared for. 

Bombur’s carefully-tended fire was down to glowing embers when they got back. For the most part, everyone had their bedrolls spread near it, each with a curled-up hump of Dwarf inside. Nori instinctively took inventory and found all in order, save for the fact that Bilbo was missing again. Liked to go off and talk to the ponies, that one, and probably thought that no one noticed, even though they had no ponies left – maybe he was talking to empty air, or needed time by himself. Well, Nori noticed every-bloody-thing, and Bilbo had best learn it. 

Dwalin squatted down by Thorin, who lay on the outskirts of the camp, and shook his shoulder. “Thorin,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “something’s happened. Wake up.” 

Thorin was sitting up within a second. He’d proven himself a light sleeper on this quest so far, one who couldn’t stop tossing and turning at that. Nori couldn’t help but look at him sometimes when he had watch, and wonder what dreams had the nerve to torture a king. “What is it?” Thorin asked, and rubbed a hand over his face. 

“Nori and I were off in the woods –“ 

“I don’t need to hear this,” Thorin interrupted. “Whatever you and Nori get up to when you’re alone isn’t my business, as long as you make sure nothing harms the rest of us.” 

Dwalin let out a frustrated growl. Nori knew it well. “It’s not got to do with _that_ , Thorin. There was something out there, maybe a wolf, but more like a warg from the look of it. Ran right over our heads and ran off. You didn’t hear it?” 

“A _warg?_ ” Thorin scrambled to his feet. “I heard nothing.” He whipped his head from side to side, his eyes visibly wide and frantic even from Nori’s distance, and turned in a slow circle. “How sure are you?” 

Dwalin’s mouth opened and closed, as if he’d thought better of whatever he wanted to say. He sighed. “Can’t be sure,” he admitted. “Nori didn’t think it was a warg.” 

“And I’d know,” Nori put in. “Sounded more like them dogs we heard howling in Bree.” Hadn’t that been a racket, too. Bilbo insisted he’d put up for a night at an inn, so of course Glóin backed him up, and the rest of the Company had followed suit. Nori’d slept like a baby except for whenever the damn dogs howled. 

Thorin’s posture relaxed so marginally that only someone who knew him as well as Nori did would have noticed. “A lone wolf,” he said, and looked around the camp once more. “I’m loath to disturb anyone for night traveling if it’s not necessary. The younger members of our Company have been almost dropping where they stand for days.” 

_My sentiments exactly_ , Nori thought, stifling a yawn. “I’ll go cuddle up with my brothers if you want,” he offered. “Might as well go on and do the same with your nephews, Your Majestic Thorin-ness.” Both Thorin and Dwalin leveled looks at him that could have curdled milk. Oh, well – not the first time. “I’m sure I’ll wake up if that wolf comes into our camp. I’m a light sleeper.” 

“That’s true,” Dwalin said, and held up a hand. “Ye don’t want to know how I know that, Thorin, trust me. Go on and go to bed. I’ll take the rest of my watch with Balin.” 

Thorin’s shoulders dropped. “If the wolf was far enough away that I couldn’t hear it, it likely won’t come after us,” he finally concluded. “And if it was a warg, you’d know. You’ve seen enough of them.” Now he fixed his glare on Dwalin. “But I don’t want to hear anything again about how you spent your watch in the woods with Nori. I don’t care how bored you are.” 

Dwalin looked down at his feet. Nori could just imagine his cheeks turning that adorable red that he hated. Such a big baldy, so damned cute. “All right,” he said. “I bloody hate wolves.” 

They were both nearly to their bedroll when Thorin muttered “You’re not the only one,” so slowly that Nori wasn’t quite sure if he’d heard right. He didn’t ask, though, because he’d survived this long; why risk an angry Dwarf under the influence of sleep deprivation?

\- - -

The next time the strange wolf howled under the moon, the world was on fire.

Thorin might have said that he himself was on fire, if he had the strength to speak. His entire body screamed in pain where he’d been thrown to the ground. A thought flickered through his head - _I’m dying_ \- as he squinted at Azog looming over him through eyes swollen half-shut. Fili and Kili would have to carry the mantle; he was only sorry that he hadn’t been able to wait to die until they reached the mountain. _I survive the Goblins, only to die here_ , he thought hazily, and braced himself for a searing slice of pain across his neck that would sever his head as it had Grandfather’s. 

The downstroke never came. Instead, his ears rang with a roar, and a dark blur flew across his line of vision, careening into Azog and knocking him away. The weight across Thorin’s ribs immediately lifted. Incapacitated he might be, but he was no fool, and he took the opportunity to struggle to his feet. 

“Thorin!” Dwalin shouted from behind him. “Run!” 

Thorin couldn’t, nor could he pull out Orcrist. The fire flickered around the figure of a dun-furred warg before him, not Azog’s white monster or any of the others he’d seen; he was sure of it. Blood splotched its muzzle and stained its bared teeth, but it wasn’t – why wasn’t it charging – could it be – 

The warg lowered its head and flopped to on what a two-legged creature might have been called knees. The body behind it…

Thorin might have fallen to his knees himself if his boots hadn’t kept him firmly planted, thank Mahal. Azog lay behind the warg, and though he’d fooled Thorin once, from the looks of him he wouldn’t rise this time. From the look of his throat, he would never rise again. 

“What are you?” Thorin asked, and that was when he saw the creature’s eyes. They weren’t deep brown or ice-blue or hateful yellow, but he knew them nonetheless, and they belonged to someone who was no warg at all. Not ‘what are you’, but _who_. “B-Bilbo?” 

The warg put up its muzzle and released a triumphant howl towards the moon, and incredibly, the scattered wargs behind them followed. A moment later, the remaining Orcs fled, the clatter of dropped weapons and frenzy of hushed Black Speech all they left behind. 

As soon as the last footstep had echoed in the distance, Thorin finally dropped to his knees, pain suddenly blooming in his chest with the force of every pound Azog had thrown onto him. “Thorin?” he heard Dwalin say. “Thorin, are you all right?” His heart was pounding; he could hear it. Was he dying? 

Before his eyes closed against the fire’s glare, a cold nose nudged his ear, followed by another soft howl. 

But when they opened again, Bilbo was looming over him: whole, healthy, and entirely Hobbit, backed by the light of a sunrise. 

There were questions to be answered, and Thorin would have those answers. He shakily got to his feet - _Mahal_ , he hurt all over – and stood before Bilbo. “You,” he began in a low voice that sounded strange to his ears. “What were you doing? You nearly got yourself killed! Did I not say that you were a burden? That you would not survive in the wild? That you have no place among us?” Clearly, someone had wanted him to eat his words, because after what he’d seen back there…no, Bilbo’s expression was crestfallen. That wasn’t right. “I have never been so wrong in all my life.” He lunged forward and grabbed Bilbo in an embrace, fleetingly grateful that at least for now, there were no fangs anywhere in sight. 

With that, and all the excitement of seeing Erebor before him after all these years, Thorin nearly forgot how much he hurt until halfway down the twisted natural steps of the Carrock. But when he remembered, it hit him nearly as hard as Azog had. “Ah,” he groaned, and clutched his middle. The pain was back with a vengeance, and it was almost worse: deep and spreading out like a puffed-up cut where the first blows had been sharp. “Óin?” 

“We’ll be at the bottom in a tick,” grumbled Óin, “if y’ can keep still until then. I’ll not let ye die, Thorin, mark it.” 

So Thorin held on as best he could, given that the stone had no carved-in railing, and suffered the indignity of Óin undressing him once they’d reached the valley at the bottom. “Those cuts aren’t clean,” Óin told him after using his lens to look at the scraped-open skin on Thorin’s torso. “Ground your clothes in, they did. I’ll have to pick out the loose threads.” 

Thorin winced. He’d had far worse, but that still sounded even worse than having a splinter removed. “If you must.” 

“Oh, I must,” Óin said, wagging a finger at him. “Someone’ll – oi, Bilbo, watch over him while I clean the cuts. Make sure he doesn’t run off.” 

“Well, I never,” said Bilbo, but that didn’t change the fact that he was at Thorin’s side in an instant. “You said clean the cuts? Thorin, I’ll take your hand. I mean I’ll…” He cleared his throat, cheeks pink. “It’ll keep you from attacking Óin. Yes, it will.” 

Perhaps. But Thorin would allow his hopes to rise if it would distract him from the pain of Óin pulling – “ _Ow!_ ” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. “Bilbo, you can turn into a warg.” 

“A werewolf, I’ll have you know,” Bilbo said. “That’s what we call ourselves.” His hand was warm in Thorin’s, if disconcertingly small. “Some Hobbits can do it. The…more highly-placed families, let’s say. I first changed when I was small.” 

“Changed?” 

“At the full moon,” Bilbo clarified. “That does mean the Mannish legends are true, if you were wondering.” 

Thorin shrugged. “I wasn’t,” he said. “I don’t know very many Mannish legends.” 

“Well, then, ignore what I just said. It does mean that I owe Dwalin and Nori an apology for scaring them at the last full moon, though.” Bilbo coughed, and though Thorin couldn’t see it, he imagined Bilbo looked rather embarrassed. “And you, I think. I wasn’t a warg, and I’m sorry I got the lot of you worked up for nothing.” 

“That was you!” Nori shouted accusingly from somewhere not far away as Óin pulled out another thread. “Why’s every adventure we have got to end with Bilbo’s danglers soaring over one of our heads?” 

Thorin opened his eyes to see Bilbo’s expression and wasn’t disappointed; it was utterly indignant. “Well,” Bilbo said, “I’ll just have to time my transformation so that your delicate sensibilities aren’t offended, shall I? I did enough for you when I paid for the inn at Bree.” 

“That was you,” Thorin said in slow realization. So _that_ was why Bilbo had insisted so vociferously. “Not dogs.” 

“No, the dogs joined in,” Bilbo admitted. “Quite a racket for a werewolf. It probably wasn’t as bad for you. I howled at them quite a lot to make them calm down.” 

“Wait, why would howling help?” 

Bilbo raised his eyebrows. “Asserting my dominance. What else?” 

Thorin would have asked what sort of dominance _that_ was, given that Bilbo was a very small person most of the time, but Óin interrupted by slapping his side. “That’s you done, lad,” he said. “Less complaining than most o’ my patients. Better have a Hobbit at yer side if y’ got a fancy for injurin’ yerself.” 

“Well, I never,” said Bilbo as Óin packed up his things. “Hm. That’s fine, but there’s one thing I won’t budge on.” 

“Oh?” 

Bilbo fixed him with a gimlet stare. “Don’t try to pet me.”

\- - - 

When Bilbo was just a faunt, and had discovered that he became a pup at the full moon in the way of the Bagginses and Tooks, his happy father scruffed him and carried him about all night in his mouth. Then when they were exhausted the next morning, Dad and Mum told him all sorts of things about how it was when one was a werewolf. Bilbo had been ravenous and in the process of inhaling an enormous bowl of oatmeal with raisins at the time, so perhaps he could be forgiven for not remembering every detail.

Namely, that when one’s family and friends were threatened, one could suddenly transform in the middle of the day and throw a son of an Orc to the ground. 

The transformation happened in a flash. Bilbo snarled and bared his suddenly-sharp teeth, and leaped forward to knock Bolg away from Thorin, his claws skittering on the ice. He preferred not to think about what he had to do next, but suffice it to say that by the time he was finished, Bolg was dead and the wargs that had followed him around the southern tip of the Mirkwood were howling in triumph. 

The next thing he knew, it felt as though he’d been conked in the back of the head, but he was himself again. A pup – a real one – stood over him, sniffing. “Oh, go away with you,” Bilbo grumbled, and then he remembered where in bloody hell he was. “Thorin!” He leapt to his feet and looked about. “Thorin, please tell me you’re alive!” 

“I’m fine,” said Thorin. Thank the Valar! Bilbo spun around to look at him. He was a bit less than _fine_ if you went by the blood on him, but he was alive, and that was all that mattered. “The lads are fine, too, and our Company, and your wargs…Bilbo! That hurts!” 

“Don’t care,” Bilbo said into his chest. “Thorin, you’re alive. That’s all I need!” He smelt a bit foul. No matter; a wash in the River Running would take care of that, cold-water-loving creatures that Dwarves were. “Now.” He drew back and kissed Thorin’s chin. “What’s this about my wargs?” Thorin’s face went pink; suddenly, Bilbo realized what he’d done. “Oh. I’m…that’s a bit of a warg and werewolf gesture…” He hadn’t gotten any better at lying since Gollum, it seemed. 

“No, you biting those wargs in the throat to show them you were their master was a warg and werewolf gesture,” said Thorin. Despite the blush, he didn’t look terribly perturbed. “If you wanted to kiss me before, you could have done so.” 

The Took side of his family would certainly approve. Bilbo swallowed, steeled himself, and kissed Thorin’s cheek. The hair and beard tickled his lips and he didn’t care. “Well. If you care for that, then I’ll keep doing it. What was it about my wargs?” 

Thorin opened his mouth, paused, and shook his head. “It’s not important,” he said. “I love your wargs. They’re large, friendly harbingers of destruction now that they’ve slipped their Orcs.” 

“I know – aren’t they?” Bilbo said. “They hated the way the Orcs treated them.” The stories he’d heard in howls had curdled the food in his stomach. “They’ll stay with us if you don’t mind, Thorin.” 

“I suppose I don’t have a choice.” Thorin wound an arm around him. “Not when you can change into a wolf in the daytime.” 

_Thorin is alive_ , Bilbo reminded himself. _Everyone is fine_. That was worth a lifetime of such wolf jokes, if it came to that. He wrapped his arm around Thorin’s waist in response. “Well, Your Majesty,” he said, “let’s begin the first real day of your reign.”


End file.
